Businesses around the world are trying to make operations more efficient daily. Technology certainly makes that easier, but at what cost to the customer? It’s quite common to hear about the human element being taken out of many day-to-day tasks here in the 21st century, especially in the internet and technology industries.

With that being said, the importance of customer service in the website/tech/app industries becomes even greater at the risk of losing the human side of a business-customer interaction. Although text and/or digital conversation seems easier for both the customer and the business, a personal conversation over the phone can help accomplish a customer’s goal quicker.

“Positive aspects include the audible cues that telephone professionals rely on to help them engage customers and, when necessary, to defuse tense situations–with a methodology developed and fine-tuned over decades,” according to Micah Solomon, a contributor to Forbes. “Voice also has the advantage of being undeniably real time…”

Although artificial intelligence (A.I.) could pose an adverse connotation to customer service, a recent study by Salesforce revealed customer relationship management is actually improving due to this type of technology.

“While it might sound counterintuitive to say ‘use technology to be more engaging in your service,’ that’s exactly the mindset of forward-thinking teams,” an article in Top Tech News stated via the Salesforce report. “Rather than replace human contact, AI enhances the experience by adding humanlike intelligence to interactions.”

Additionally, statistics show the factor that 77 percent of customers value most in a business interaction is their own time, according to Forrester Research. That statistic comes courtesy of a list published by Business 2 Community, which also revealed “the most important factor to customer loyalty is the reduction of customer effort.”

At Intellirent, we’ve cultivated humanlike intelligence throughout our technology, for both our renters and agents. These interactions perfectly complement the live human interaction we encourage between agents and renters as well as both types of users with our support teams. So, regardless of the means in which a website, app or technology-based business operates its customer service, the important thing is an overall consciousness of the customer’s time as well as access to a live person for help.